Hammer & Air Read online

  We heard a shifting then, and I looked behind my shoulder in time to see morning’s light peek through the curtained window, and the prince, lying bereft and deserted, sated and used and covered in spend, gave a groan and became a bear again.

  He banished himself to the kitchen, licking fitfully at his fur like a cat.

  That day it snowed and snowed hard. There were no playing in the front yard, no sweeping the snow from the roof, and the mill room were too far away from the fire to work any repairs.

  The bear ventured out after we fed it fish from the cupboard (it disdained the honey with a wounded look) and I wondered if it were sulking in its cave. There weren’t much I could do about it, though, and the bear’s tender feelings would have to repair themselves. I’d said “no” and I’d said it clear. I had the feeling that what Hammer had done to the bear prince in punishment were more mercy than Hammer thought he deserved.

  After a brief bout of house cleaning, we spent the day reading. I made Hammer read for once, and I refused to listen to protests about fumbling the words.

  “You don’t practice,” I said shortly. “And I’ve had more than enough practice for the moment. Here, you adore this one. I don’t doubt you have it memorized in full.”

  Hammer did, and I took his feet in my lap and rubbed them firmly, simply because I knew he would like the feeling. Together we lost ourselves in the story of a princess making shirts for her brothers, in spite of an insistent prince who wanted her before her task were done.

  “He kissed her hands and her arms, making love to her shoulders and neck, until she blushed and pulled away and gave her consent.”

  Hammer stopped, and repeated the words as though he’d never heard them before.

  “What?” I asked, wondering at the workings of his peasant’s mind.

  “The words, I like them.”

  “Which ones?”

  He looked me square in the eye. “’Making love,’” he said with meaning, and I flushed, and then I found my eyes grow hot and my throat grow thick.

  “It’s a sight better than ‘fucking’ isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Fucking’s what he does in our bed. It’s nice. Sometimes it’s even fun. But it’s not…” he trailed off and blushed, apparently embarrassed by the words now that he’d found them and claimed them for ours.

  “It’s not making love,” I said for him, and he smiled shyly at me and nodded.

  “No. No it’s not.”

  I smiled back at him, as shy as he were, and there were several heartbeats between us before he started to read again.

  Part VIII

  Fish in the Stream

  So much of the winter were spent with storms, that we lost track of the days drifting in the cottage, floating about in a white ocean of frozen time.

  Eventually, though, the smell of the forest around us became less knife-edged and more wet. The snow became slushy, and the sun shined more brightly for longer. The stars we could see from our small patch of window shifted, became closer and fatter, like drops of water on a kitten’s black fur.

  The bear prince’s time in our bed became shorter. The hours between midnight and dawn swept by in a glittering, heaving whirl of cock and fuck and come like a dancing princess’s ball gown, whirling to the music of our grunts and pants and howls.

  On the days when I wouldn’t, when I preferred to sleep, to snuggle, to simply touch, he would take a spare blanket and sleep next to the bed, on the floor.

  There were no convincing him to do otherwise, and it were a shame, I think now. He should have had that to remember, but he were too sure, I think, that one night, I would choose him over Hammer. Every night I spent in Hammer’s arms, the idea that I would leave Hammer became more and more of a fairy tale.

  One morning, we walked outside and our boots sank to muddied earth through the snow. The next, the snow were only there in patches around the small lawn of the cottage. The next, the rose bushes (which I had pruned to naught but twigs when the air first smelled wet) had tender green leaves unfurling. The next, they had soft, tiny buds.

  Within a sennight, the lawn were new shoots of grass, and there were brilliant, brave first roses, blue/white on one side and red on the other, rising over the archway of the cottage to meet in the middle. They were so beautiful they made my breath catch, and Hammer chuckled softly in my ear as he came up behind me.

  “So you’ll have roses by your home?” he asked smugly, and I smiled sideways at him.

  “Haven’t you written that down in those plans of yours?”

  “Aye,” he said, his voice as complacent as it could be. “Your home will have roses, Eirn, of that I have no doubt.”

  He said it that way to give me a choice—I knew that, just like I knew he’d been trying oh so valiantly to let me choose the bear prince if ever once that were my inclination. I’d tried—in a thousand small ways I’d tried—to tell him it weren’t necessary, to let him know he were my only choice, but he wouldn’t believe. I figured he would believe when we packed our bags together and walked out of the cottage, saying goodbye to the only true home we’d ever known, and setting out to find one more suited for children of no one, using our skills to survive.

  So now I only sighed, and wondered what sort of declaration it would take to get him to believe. The bear came outside with us—we were cutting up some more dead wood, so the fireplace would be ready for the next desperate travelers hosted by the cottage, and I were wondering if I should plant something along the soft earth in the back as well. The cupboard had given me morning glory seeds, and I had no idea who wished them up, but I were thinking they would look very nice on the east wall of the cottage, and that the cottage itself might welcome a break from the brightness of the sun against the kitchen.

  “As long as my home always has Hammer,” I murmured, thinking that I would plant morning glories here and in the phantom home, the one that housed our future. Hammer didn’t hear me—he were too busy running to get the axe for the wood—but the bear did. He grimaced at me and yawned, baring his teeth. He were not pleased—he were never pleased—when Hammer and I had those quiet moments that I were coming to think all grown people did when they built a life together.

  “We’re not talking about your cock anymore,” I told him sharply. “There’s no reason to get defensive.”

  The week before, when there were still snow on the ground, the bear had come out of the house and I’d been assaulted by a sudden question.

  “Hey, Hammer!”

  “Aye?” He didn’t seem to mind using the old words around me anymore. Now that we’d spoken where no one could hear, he knew I had only respect for the words in his heart.

  “You know how the prince’s cock has the foreskin cut off?”

  The bear gave a surprised snort to hear us talk like this—but it weren’t like Hammer and I wouldn’t have noticed. Both of us had to be fully erect for the crowns of our cocks to blossom out of their meaty hoods.

  “Aye?”

  “How come he still has a sheathe as a bear? Wouldn’t it seem like his bear’s cock would be hanging half out without that part of the sheathe—it wouldn’t be brown, would it? It would be all pink and wet?”

  Hammer and the bear both blinked at me, and the bear wrinkled his brow in what seemed to be embarrassment. Hammer gave the thing an unexpected pat on his waist-high shoulder as he shook his head.

  “How come?” he asked, to make sure he heard right.

  “Yeah. How come?”

  Hammer and the bear exchanged that look again.

  “Because magic is kind, Eirn, and I suggest we leave it at that.”

  That weren’t the only time Hammer and the bear seemed to be on the same side of things. That furious night when Hammer had fucked the bear prince into submission had left a mark in the bear’s heart that surprised us all.

  About two weeks after the first incident, we closed the door between the bedroom and the front room, and simply lay in bed and touched. We had just drifte
d off to sleep when the brown bear had begun to wail. A bear’s wail, as opposed to its moan or its howl, is a terrible, stomach-clenching thing, and after laughing and half threatening to spend the night with our pillows over our ears, we finally wandered (naked) into the living room to see what his royal bear-ness wanted.

  He were also naked, in human form, and bent over the back of the chesterfield, his arse glistening in the fire light from the olive oil he were spreading inside his stretched hole with his dripping fingers.

  He’d scowled over his shoulder at Hammer and I, his face a study in hurt and defiance.

  He wanted to be taken. He needed to be taken. But he didn’t know where the want or the need sprang from, and so he bathed Hammer in the contempt a master shows a servant, and with one haughty glare, demanded that he be taken.

  Hammer weren’t nobody’s servant.

  The bear prince found his head jerked back hard by his hair, and Hammer—looking at me slyly, as though knowing the sight of the two of them made my cock stiff and purple—were muttering in his ear.

  “Naw, pretty man. You want it? You want me to give it to you?” The bear prince moaned, probably feeling Hammer’s prick rubbing against his oily backside. Hammer nodded and grunted in his ear. “Yeah, you want it. You want it, you ask nicely.”

  The prince whimpered and rested his cheek on the couch, looking up at Hammer with limpid eyes. Something about the look told me this man weren’t used to begging.

  “Close,” Hammer hissed, then looked at me slyly. “You want your knob polished there, Eirn?”

  I gaped at him, and my cock started dripping at the thought.

  “Aye,” I muttered, my throat rusty, and Hammer said, “Get on your knees then, and you,” he gave the prince’s hair a yank, “on your hands and knees. You want to be fucked, you’d best make him come.”

  My cock had been used well plenty in recent weeks, but the prince’s mouth felt sweet just the same. What were sweeter were watching Hammer, setting himself up behind the prince, and waiting, waiting…

  The suction at my cock became insistent, rhythmic, and I looked down to see the prince looking slyly up at me, as though hoping I were enjoying myself. I found I’d knotted my hands in his hair and were rubbing his scalp in encouragement, and that were when Hammer struck.

  He gave no warning before plunging balls deep into the prince’s arsehole, and the prince’s groan around my cock were deep and pleasurable—from both our sides—but his groan had a fine edge of pain to it.

  And then Hammer stopped, and the prince began to shake with need.

  “You want me to move?” Hammer asked harshly, and the whine around my cock could only mean “Oh please gods please yes!”

  “Good. You keep making him happy, I might bring you to come.”

  The prince were too frantic, too needy, to be skilled. I got brushes of teeth, and no rhythm at all as Hammer started thrusting into his backside, but it didn’t matter. Watching Hammer fucking him…it were enough to bring me off without touching myself, without being touched, without a thing near my cock but the sight of the two of them, Hammer in charge and the bear prince, begging for possession with a wiggling arse in the air.

  I kept my fingers clenched in the thick sable hair, and every moan the prince made brought me closer. Hammer looked up from another vicious slam into the Prince’s arse and said, “Don’t come in his mouth, Eirn. He might like it too much.”

  The prince made a soft whimper, as though he both treasured my spend and needed the alternative, and my vision started to go black so I jerked backward just far enough to stroke myself. The familiar hot and cold flooded me, and my balls tightened to the point of pain. The prince raised a needing face to me, begging with his eyes, and I came all over it.

  He opened his mouth to catch the odd spatter, and closed his eyes to savor the taste.

  Hammer watched us, his eyes half closed, and when I reached out a hand to carelessly rub my spend into the prince’s cheek, Hammer groaned and came hard. He pushed the prince’s face into the rug beneath us so he could jerk his hips and empty his balls into the man’s willing body.

  The prince lay there for a moment and whimpered, and Hammer leaned forward and whispered loud enough for me to hear.

  “Well then, let us see you bring yourself off!”

  There were a fumbling then, and Hammer pulled out, dripping, and shoved the prince’s hips over, flipping him to his back on the many-furred rug. The prince lay there, wantonly, and grinned a tight, evil grin, before tightening his hand on his prick and stroking, hard, his thumb skating across the glistening, naked crown. His other hand moved up to nipples as pink as his lips and pinched, hard, and he groaned again, and writhed, and kept stroking.

  Hammer looked at him in admiration—you couldn’t help but admire the man’s beautiful, proud body, and his skilled use of it. When the prince started to pant and to growl, to strive mightily for that climax, Hammer reached between his legs and cupped his balls gently with one hand, and used the other to play with the spend dribbling from his arse.

  The prince’s eyes flew open in surprise and arousal, and he came, the spend coating his chest and abdomen, and gleaming in the low embers of the fire.

  Hammer wiped his hands on the prince’s thighs and stood heavily to his feet. He held out his hand for me and I took it obediently. “We’re going to clean up,” he said, the ring of order to his voice. “You lay there in your own mess until morning.”

  The prince closed his eyes then, and his head eased backward. A faint smile relaxed his lips, and he looked pleased and sated and happy—especially at the last command, which left him splayed and vulnerable and used.

  We went to the washroom and I bathed Hammer as I had before. Something about those moments called for it. Hammer, he were so humble, so contained in his own soul. To watch him command the likes of that one, well, it showed who the true prince were.

  As we slid into the sheets that night, I made the beginnings of a question enough times to irritate Hammer into answering it without hearing it.

  “You want to know why?” he muttered. “Why he’d beg to be taken like that?” He shuddered. “It’s not something I could stomach, I don’t think. Had enough of folks saying, “Do this, but not this. Bend over and take it but only when I say.” But that one—his whole life, probably, he tells the world how it’s run. To have someone take over that job? It’s a pure relief for him, even if it’s just while fucking. But he hates it too. He’ll ask for it. He’ll do it—anything I ask for, so I need to be careful what I ask—and he’ll ask again, you mark me. But mark this too, he’ll be waiting for his turn.”

  I swallowed, and leaned over to kiss Hammer sweetly. He returned the kiss, and we were quiet and kissing until we fell asleep.

  Those moments flashed to me now as I announced my intentions (to myself and the bear) to stay with Hammer as long as I held breath. Hammer didn’t believe me, and the bear wanted me for himself. It didn’t bode well, I thought with unease. There just didn’t seem to be a thing I could do about it.

  Because Hammer had been right: the bear had begged to be taken roughly. Nearly once a week he would do something irksome in his human form, and when Hammer snapped at him, he would go to his hands and knees and cower, demand and supplication written in every line of his face. Sometimes, Hammer would deny him that night, and the next, he would simply beg, arse in the air, wailing with that bear’s voice of his, and Hammer would take him—but usually not before he forced the prince to service me first.

  The things the three of us had done together between midnight and dawn would make me blush in the daylight. When that happened, the bear would sniff the heat rolling off me and prick up his ears, and Hammer would catch my embarrassment at nothing and grin slowly, and with heat, and that would make me blush even harder.

  But this day, this first real day of spring, I weren’t thinking of what the three of us did when it were skin-to-flesh-to-mouth-to-cock-to-scream-to-beg-to-come. I were thinking
of the way Hammer’s one weakness were not believing he were my heart, and the bear’s one overweening arrogance were thinking he could be.

  Hammer weren’t thinking about either of these things. His rough and ready body had been driven half mad by the long winter, and although the air were still a bit chill, the strong sun on our backs made it feel as balmy as summer.

  “Aw, Eirn!” he crowed. “Look at that! The stream is running full, and there be fish!”

  I could not help but smile in the face of unbridled glee. “Aye,” I murmured, “fish. You ready to bait your hooks?”

  He nodded eagerly, and once again it were brought to my mind how much child had been in Hammer that only I were allowed to see.

  The cottage were as square as we could make it, and we’d already spoken softly about leaving in the next sennight. There were wildflowers in knots about the edges of the stream, gold and purple and blue and white, and the idea of wading into that stream filled me with the same sort of joy it had when Hammer and I had managed to steal away to fish as children. Grinning, we stripped off our boots and socks and rolled up our trousers, and I set about digging up worms while Hammer fashioned us a couple of poles and some hooks from the metal stays of his knapsack.

  Eventually we were settled, leaning back on our elbows in the grasses and watching our poles with lazy eyes. Hammer reached out and stroked the back of my hand, that shy, child-like smile touching his lips, and I smiled back. We would be on the run in a week, we figured, and we would be starting from scratch without a penny to our names, but our lives would start, and we would be together.

  The bear wandered over and eyed us with a sour sort of snort and then started pushing at me with his muzzle. He pushed at my shoulder and then at my side, and then at my neck, whuffling with some urgency, until suddenly I were sitting up in exasperation.

  “I think he wants me to go somewhere!” I said, and Hammer rolled his eyes.